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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion vs Tales of Symphonia vs Metal Gear Solid 3 vs World of Warcraft 2009
Results Round Two Thursday, May 21st, 2009 Ulti's Analysis This match wasn't nearly as close as the first round blockbuster Oblivion and Tales of Symphonia gave us, but it was equally important and fun for a little while. Metal Gear Solid 3 came out early and set the stage for its being a surprise contender in round 3. It would eventually fall short of one of the biggest possible upsets, but for this round it proved legitimate strength by pulling away early from three tough games. Which leads us to the true match. For a time, it looked like the second round ToS match would be every bit as good as round 1. It looked early on like WoW would get last place, but within a few minutes WoW came back and gave us a three-way deadlock for second. The match stayed this way for nearly two hours, where Tales of Symphonia expectedly (based on the round 1 trends) fell off the pace. But unlike round 1, there would be no miracle comeback this time around. Tales of Symphonia had a great round 1 match and finally justified a huge amount of its fan-dom, but it fell short in round 2 in the face of Obivion. Not too long after Tales of Symphonia fell off, World of Warcraft looked to follow suit. But after Oblivion built up a 100 vote lead, the match entered one of the most prolonged stalls ever. Oblivion's lead stayed between 100 and 300 for over six hours, but neither game was able to make any headway thanks to the various rallies going on. Then the DSV hit, and WoW was able to tie the match in all of 12 seconds. It looked like WoW would explode and win easily from here, but Oblivion hung tough for a little while before doing the whole pulling-away-while-being-stalled thing. This lasted until the ASV, where Oblivion was finally able to cement the match and score second place for good. We'd had several examples of rallying not mattering too much (namely with Persona 4), but this match can finally put that argument to rest. Unless you have something on a MASSIVE scale (L-Block), rallying is negligible and always has been. If WoW of all games can't rally in this of all formats, we can officially put the rallying nonsense to rest. You can rally more votes all you want, but the people you attract will pick the option they like regardless. The true story here was Oblivion. It placed in two matches despite no bracket support at all, proving it has legitimate strength and could cause real damage if we'd ever get a 1v1 contest again. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Regarding Snake Eater and the RPG Three, hmm, seems to me its more or less a repeat of the match we just saw. You're got one standout title and three pretty weak options below it, but it should still be a fairly fun poll since there's a chance they're all equally weak. And it could be EXTRA fun because once again ToS finds itself in a pretty swell position: only GameCube option, only Nintendo option, Oblivion and WoW share the PC fanbase, and stands out well against the more mature games. (Why in the heck can't anything Metroid ever pull down a cushy no-Nintendo path like this?) Buuuuut, I just can't buy it. I could see ToS challenging WoW if it bombs hard, but that's probably the best it could do. Oblivion vs WoW is a tougher choice, especially after seeing Diablo look so respectable, but I'm going to stick to my initial SC >~ DII >> WoW (without massive rallying) stance and pick against Blizzard in this one. I just get the impression that TES will eat up any overlapping PC fanbase the two have in common, and it's got the Xbox base to help it beyond that, plus I just thought it looked more impressive between the two last round. That leaves us with MGS3 to discuss. I'm seeing some super-high preds for the game, which makes some sense considering how much it stands out from all the mid-carder RPG options, but again I'm going to pick against the crowd here and keep its percent a little lower. I mean, MGS1 had an even better LFF position (against basically two Nintendo options) and is an even stronger game, yet it failed to capitalize. Seems the same ought to happen to 3, especially since even though these are all RPGs they at least cover a pretty good variety of systems/platforms. So if Snake pulls in about the same 1/3 of the vote as he did against Zelda and Pokemon, we're looking at: * Metal Gear Solid 3 - 33.31% * The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 23.29% * World of Warcraft - 22.34% * Tales of Symphonia - 21.06% Note: due to leaving early for Terminator I was unable to see the match pic before making this guess. Looking at it now, I think I would lower Oblivion slightly (logo doesn't stand out well enough), raise MGS, lower ToS a bit (too zoomed out, though I guess it does have SWORDZ), and give WoW a slight boost (pink elf TJF is surely the strongest of all!). Let's see if that would have backfired on me... Next Day Review Words can't describe how disappointed I am in the MGS series once again failing to capitalize on almost ideal opponents. I guess it lost some late night and overnight votes thanks to WoW rallying and then got crunched in the day by Xbox voters being excited to push Oblivion back out in front, but still, this is what, 60% on a ToS that was dealing with 2 other more popular RPG choices? Really would have thought this game could maintain more of its R1 percentage than that. External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches